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Whimpers. First the new athletic build and the tattoos, then the assertiveness peeking through his signature gentleness, and now the whimpering while still giving me absolute crumbs of information to work with. This is truly getting out of hand.
“Can you not?” I point at him, moving my index finger up and down. “Stop doing all of that. It’s distracting and you know it.”
He freezes. Almost seeming afraid to make another move in fear I’ll snap at him. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Liar,” I hiss. His dimples are showing and he’s currently manspreading, leaning closer to me on the game chair.
“Forget it.” I go to rise from my chair.
“Sit. Down.”
Well, fuck me sideways, did my sweet, aged like a fine wine, gamer boy just command me to sit down?
As hot—and unexpected—as that was, it doesn’t deter me from doing the opposite to walk away.
What can I say? Old habits die hard.
He says my name, this time sweeter, desperate-sounding.
“What?” I stop in place, but I don’t bother turning around.
“I’ll play you for it.” Now we’re talking. “If you win best out of three rounds I can explain as much as I can.”
“And if I lose?”
“Then you can enjoy the time we have together without being tainted by the truth.”
Well, damn. That doesn’t sound fun. It sounds like I lose either way. Considering how racing games have never been Rennix’s strong suit, I’ll likely annihilate him, which means he’ll tell me what I want to know. But now I don’t know if I want that or if it’s going to taint me. Life has tainted me enough. All I want is a break. A good back cracking…by Rennix… Oh my god…I need to focus and stop thinking with my pussy.
“Deal?”
I get as far as saying “Umm” before the floor starts rumbling so violently I lose balance and fall onto my knees. If I get a chance to speak to who’s in charge of this Jumanji-style rip-off, I’m going to put in a suggestion to not have the floor always do this. Some people, like me, are clumsy and these conditions make it that much worse.
Rennix doesn’t waste any time, he’s already standing in front of me, towering over me, with a hand ready for me to grab onto, and my god, the angle from which I’m looking at him, with me on my knees and him peering down at me with those slutty glasses, has me pulsing. So much for not thinking with my pussy.
“Let me guess, it’s time to go?”
He doesn’t wait for me to latch onto his hand; he takes my palm into his and pulls me up to my feet. “Yes.”
My opportunity for a snarky complaint is robbed when the next door we have to go through reveals itself.
It’s just a coincidence. The beads hanging from the doorway are not pink and silver. They’re pink and silver. It doesn’t have stars of different sizes strung on the beads by hand. The array of beads are staring me directly in the face, as is the sign on the very top held on my twine that looks like it barely survived a fire, that reads: Natalia’s Room…Scram.
“Yeah, so we’re not going in there.” As soon as I break the news to Rennix, we are catapulted by a force unknown directly in front of the door. So close in fact that my nose is smushed against the very same door I used to slam so hard in countless dramatic fits that my parents took it off the hinges for a while to “teach me a lesson.”
“I don’t think we have a choice.” Rennix is right, but it’s not going to stop me from being stubborn about this.
“We always have a choice. I say we choose to stop the games. Let the game do its thing and take us both together.”
“That’s morbid.”
“You think that is morbid? You should’ve seen my diary entries after you left me,” I whisper to myself, loud enough that he definitely heard.
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing, I was just kidding.”
“No, you weren’t. I know you. But I didn’t do all this for it to end this way. So please open the door.”
